


Ball and Chain

by st_aurafina



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, Handcuffed Together, Mayhem Twins - Freeform, background root/shaw - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:15:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24716668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/pseuds/st_aurafina
Summary: John thought he and Shaw had this number all figured out. Now they're on the run, in handcuffs.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 41
Collections: Exchange of Interest 2020





	Ball and Chain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Michaelssw0rd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michaelssw0rd/gifts).



> Thank you to my betas.

John was pretty certain he and Shaw had this number all figured out: a nasty piece of work up to his neck in a human trafficking ring. The whole mission was going smoothly, right up until the asshole threw a brown glass bottle at his head and bolted from his apartment. The bottle missed but glass shattered across the marble floor, spraying them both with clear liquid. The dampness evaporated instantly and John's head swam. Shaw sagged against his body, her eyelids dipping. 

"Sweet. Sevoflurane maybe? Anaesthetic," she said, slurring the words. "Gonna affect me first; I'm the smallest…" Then she was out, arms and legs splayed on the floor. 

John made a valiant effort to drag her free of the fumes – through the broken glass and all, they could fight about the stitches later – but he was down to his knees within three steps, and unconscious a few seconds later.

* * *

John woke, his mouth woolly dry and his back to a concrete pillar in a dimly lit, vast and cold area. He jolted, and something rattled behind him, a sharp, metallic sound. His hands were cuffed, but not to each other. Fingers grabbed at his wrists and he immediately tried to jerk them away. 

"It's me, you moron," Shaw whispered from behind him. "Get your shit together and pretend to be unconscious. I don't know if there are cameras here or not. And please tell me they didn't get your set of keys, because I have been diligently searched and disarmed. Creeps." He felt the clench of her fists as she cracked her knuckles threateningly. 

"Left hip pocket," John muttered through closed lips. "Couple of skeleton keys there, inside the lining." 

He let his head hang down while Shaw slipped her fingers into his pocket, cursing under her breath at the awkward angle. This was a basement, judging from the lighting and the markings on the floor. When he shifted his weight from one hip to the other, he felt the holster empty at his side. 

"Fuck!" Shaw said, softly, as the keys slipped from her fingers to the floor. "Hands are so cold, damn it." 

John felt along her wrist: her skin was cool and dry, and there was a slight tremble under his fingertips. "You hit?" he said. "You sound shocky." 

"Fuck you," Shaw said. "I'm half your size, it's going to take me a bit longer to shake off the anaesthesia. And whatever, it's still in there, it's going to stop the bleeding getting too bad so I'll be fine." 

John leaned against the concrete pillar and hooked the ring of tiny keys with his index finger. "You keep a lookout as best you can from that angle – can you get me an exit? See a staircase?" He flipped through the keys until he found a likely option and manoeuvred it into the keyhole on the left. 

"There's an elevator," Shaw said. "Not sure where, but I heard it ding." 

"When?" John turned the key and the cuffs fell open. He flexed his fingers and rocked to his knees to work on the other side. 

"When what, moron?" Shaw's voice was oddly sleepy. 

John fumbled with the key, trying to get it to make contact with the keyhole in the other pair of cuffs. "Stay with me, Shaw. When did you hear the elevator ding?" 

Shaw said, "A while ago…" just as footsteps came thudding into the basement. John pushed upwards to his feet, staggered slightly as he adjusted for Shaw's weight, and hauled her up too. Then he was running, dragging Shaw by their joined wrists, ducking and weaving between the columns in the basement. Shots pinged past him, kicking up puffs of dust from the concrete floor and walls, but he kept them moving until they were in the darkest corner of the room. 

There were two men, both armed, both heavyweight thugs of the sort that generally accompanied mobster bigwigs, and they advanced towards John and Shaw. 

"You with me, Shaw?" John nudged her and she grunted, then punched him in the ribs, which he took as an affirmative. "Two targets. You take the short one."

"Why do I have to take the short one?" Shaw said, as she swung her foot up between the tall one's legs. He collapsed, wheezing and clutching his groin. 

John swung his punch away from the tall guy and caught the short guy unawares on the side of the head. "Because you…" he saw the glower on Shaw's face and changed his mind. "Never mind." 

"Damn straight," said Shaw and lurched off towards the exit. John paused to pick up weapons for them both, then the cuffs pulled at his wrist. He wrapped his fingers around both guns at once and scurried to Shaw's side.

The height differential meant that he had to run with one shoulder down. In the elevator, he held the guns so Shaw could choose. He instinctively took his own in his right hand, which was chained to Shaw's left, so there was an awkward struggle as they juggled weapons.

"Ha ha," said Shaw. "You're shooting lefty." 

"Joke's on you," John said. He cocked the gun left-handed. "I go both ways." 

Shaw snorted, and the snort turned into a rattling cough. "Fucking sevoflurane." She spat on the elevator floor, then glanced up at the surveillance cameras with a grin. "Hey, you think Finch is watching us?" There was a hopeful tone to the question, though John didn't know if it was a hope for rescue or that Harold had seen her defile the carpet. 

The elevator stopped with a jerk and the lights went out, then an alarm started bellowing. 

"Wow, Finch, over-react much?" Shaw blinked in the strobing red emergency light, and John saw that for all her bravado, her skin was pale and clammy. 

"You're getting shocky, Shaw." John slipped his jacket off his shoulders, only to realise that the cuffs meant that he could only get one arm free. He stared at their interconnected arms, sure there was a way he could turn the jacket inside out or something so Shaw could wear it. 

Shaw burst into laugher, a little too excessively, which set off her cough again.  
"You… idiot…" she said between paroxysms. This time when she hawked phlegm out, it was speckled with blood. Shaw caught John looking at it, and she scrubbed it into the floor with her boot. "We're sitting ducks in here," she said, and pointed up. "How about we go that way?" 

John eyed the narrow access hatch. "I think one of us would be better popping a thumb," he said. 

"Yeah?" said Shaw. "You first. I'm not messing my aim up for a week because you couldn't hold onto your keys. "

There was no point arguing, thought John. Anyway, he'd dislocated his thumb often enough that it wouldn't be that bad. A bit of ice, a couple of vicodin, a couple of days shooting left-handed, and he'd be fine. He rolled up his sleeve and took hold of his thumb. 

"Want me to do it?" said Shaw. "I'm better qualified." 

"Thanks, but I've got this," said John. He took a breath, bent his thumb, but before the joint popped loose, the elevator door distorted under the impact of two bullets. 

Shaw was up on his shoulders in very short notice, prying the hatch open. She vanished onto the roof of the elevator, and John's arm pulled upwards to accommodate it. He felt along the edge of the opening with his cuffed hand, found purchase, and heaved himself up and through. 

Shaw lay on her side with her arm stretched out to give him as much play on the cuffs as she could. When he was all the way through, she pushed the hatch into position, and forced a metal strut through the hinge to fix it closed. 

"Where did you get that?" asked John, scanning the complicated elevator mechanism. He knew a lot of ways to sabotage an elevator, but he'd prefer it was him that did the work, at least until he was certain that Shaw was clear on what was safe to break off and what was going to send them plummeting to their deaths. He reached for the access ladder and found a rung missing, right where he'd have taken the first step. 

Behind him, Shaw snickered. "I needed a lever. Don't worry, only the people chasing us will be surprised." 

Scaling a ladder while cuffed to another person was a hell of a workout. John broke a sweat early on in their climb. He had to climb one-handed, dangling his arm down so Shaw could keep up. At the floor above them, they juggled their chained arms so that John could prise the door open. When the doors parted easily, John allowed himself the briefest moment to believe this mission was finally picking up. Then Shaw made a soft but still angry noise, and blacked out on the ladder. 

John made a desperate scrabble to catch her before she ended up dangling from his wrist, and caught her ungracefully by sports bra and ribcage. 

"Come on, Shaw. Help me out here," he said, as her slack body tugged on his wrist, and her legs threatened to trip him off the ladder. Her torso was slippery with blood, warm and fresh. She'd obviously been lying about how bad the gunshot wound was. As he juggled her unconscious body, John wondered why he was even surprised about that. 

He realised the goombas pursuing them had pried the elevator doors open when a few shots came ricocheting up the shaft, pinging as they hit and bounced off steel cables and pylons. John hefted Shaw into a fireman's hold, and made a heroic jump for the open doors in front of him. As he landed on his belly, wriggling desperately to get his legs out of the way of bullets, he heard a clatter followed by a dwindling scream. He remembered the missing rung on the ladder and he snickered despite the situation. Then he was out and clear of the elevator, dragging Shaw up from the ground and back over his shoulder, and heading out to find an exit for them both.

* * *

By the time Doctor Madani was done with tabletop surgery – his speciality, he claimed, peeling off his gloves – John had had time to wash and change so he could present as suave as possible before Shaw woke up. When she woke, he casually leaned against the wall of the bedroom, in his best James Bond posture of nonchalance. 

"Asshole. S'that what they teach you guys at Langley?" Shaw said, watching him through half-closed eyes. "Did he get the bullet in one piece?" 

John held up a ziploc bag. "He sure did, and he knows you well enough to save it for you, too." 

Shaw snorted. "I suppose if I have to be anaesthetised and cuffed to someone, you're not such a bad option. At least it wasn't Root." 

"You know the Machine can hear you, right?" Root's voice came from the other side of the door. The door handle rattled. "You know She tells me when someone abuses my good name." 

Shaw rolled her eyes at John, then noticed that he was reaching for the lock. "You'd better not," she said. "I can get out of this bed, you know. I can find places on your body to hurt you a lot." 

John grinned at her and flipped the lock anyway. The door immediately swung open, and Root swanned in with a covered tray. 

Shaw pointed a finger at John, cocked an imaginary gun and fired it. Then Root settled the tray over her legs and uncovered the dish, revealing a dripping chunk of steak, barely cooked. Shaw's attention was immediately diverted, and she snatched the knife off the tray before Root had put down the metal cover. 

"I'm still coming for you, John," she said through a mouthful of bloody meat. 

John watched her chewing furiously, pointing the tip of the steak knife in his direction. "Yeah, I know," he said. It was reassuring. Shaw would always have his back, even if it was so she could kill him later to make her point. That was the kind of team they were.


End file.
